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First of all, I believe an introduction is due. My name is Savannah Pope, and, in addition to all my other responsibilities as a Kroka student, I have been elected the update scribe. Thus, all the updates you will be reading as this adventure unfolds are to be written by me. Perhaps I should give you a little background on myself. I am eighteen years old and come all the way from the distant universe of Los Angeles, California. I will be attending Middlebury College in the spring, and plan to major in environmental studies. For the past few years, my major time commitment has been raising the money to put a wind turbine up on my high school’s campus, and I chose to come to Kroka with the hopes of shedding my city girl roots and learning more about what it really means to live sustainably.

So, where should I begin? The task of condensing such an intense week into a page or so is intimidating. I suppose the easiest way to sum it up would be to say that we have been doing everything; that is, everything that seemed insane seven days ago but now makes the most sense in the world. We have been biking, running, climbing up the faces of gigantic rocks, jumping into cold lakes, making yogurt, discovering smells we were not aware our bodies could produce, and eating more food than I ever thought possible. We have been waking up every morning at 5:30 a.m. (actually, we get to sleep until 6:30 on Saturdays and Sundays!) in order to exercise in time to do all the chores that a self-sufficient farm life entails. These chores rotate every four days and include cooking, logging and chopping firewood, carrying water from the well, and tending the composting toilet. On top of all of this, we have been learning Spanish, taking math lessons from a hilarious and surly “stained glass maker” named Hans, and taking part in a construction project.

It would be a big, corpulent lie to say that getting adjusted to this new lifestyle hasn’t been challenging for me. Between whipping my body into shape and living with a completely new group of people, I have certainly experienced my share of homesickness and oh-god-I’m-not-going-to-get-this-bike-up-that-hill moments. The things which have truly gotten me through have been getting to know the staff and other students and excelling in projects such as my research on solar water heaters, some of which I plan to build in Ecuador. This is a part of what Kroka calls our Main Projects, something I think all of us are excited about. They present each of us with a kind of opportunity to pursue our passions that is rarely found in any mainstream schools. Katie, for instance, will be studying the process of making medicines out of local plants and herbs. Raina, on the other hand, is studying jewelry making, a knack that will certainly have a chance to bloom even further in Ecuador. Luckily, several students are taking on food making, and I fully look forward to testing some bread and cheese experiments.

The construction project has been especially amazing. We have been collaborating with Ken, a local carpenter who also designed Kroka’s composting toilet, to build a home for a future resident farmer. The building we have been erecting with our very own hands is called a yurt. Yurts are cylindrical structures that are topped by a pointy roof with a circular sky window. Ours is quite singular, because it is made of local wood instead of yak hide and other materials found in Mongolia. Also, it is not meant to support a nomadic lifestyle, but rather to block against the frost, unlike traditional yurts. The most unique part of the design, however, is the beautiful wooden hexagon we have designed in the center of the floor. It has been wonderful to see how far we have gotten in just a week with the floor and insulation. On Wednesday, as we began placing the floorboards, Ken taught us how to hammer them in without leaving any scuffs. “Anyone who leaves scuffs,” he said jokingly, “has to sign their initials next to the mark.” By Friday, we were all signing those boards quite a bit less.

Our week closed with Marcianna’s nineteenth birthday. On Sunday morning, we were woken up by Marcela, Mathias, and Nicole, three of our staff members who had decided to start Marcianna’s special day with a mariachi band. After going for a tough rock climb, we took the evening to celebrate. As the current cook, I gleefully presented the birthday feast of “locro de papas” (Ecuadorian potato soup), cabbage with peanut butter, bread, and sour cream. Everyone was very happy to share some chocolate that Thomas, one of the three Ecuadorian brothers, brought as a treat. On top of everything, we gobbled up the carrot cake Katie had baked out of ingredients from the garden, local dairy, and maple syrup. After eating, we gathered in the main yurt for a jam session. It was nice to end the week laughing and knowing that I had made some new friends.

I would love to chat more, but I must get going—I have a yurt to build, and a trip to prepare for. Tomorrow we are waking up at 3:30 am to bike twenty-seven miles to Hans’s house, where we will make “stained glass windows” and have a math fest! Thanks for taking the time to read this update, and I’ll catch up with all of you next week! Be sure to check out the quote and recipes of the week!